Leading article: Dog days

Talk about going to the dogs. London's greyhound racing stadiums have been slowly disappearing for some time. There were once 33 tracks in the capital. Now only three remain. And with the announcement that Walthamstow's stadium is to close in August, that number will soon be a mere two. The latest runner to crash out is a shock, but not a surprise to the greyhound racing community. It has been clear for some time that the track's days of economic viability are behind it.

Greyhound racing was once the country's second most popular sport after football. But now it seems people increasingly prefer computer-gaming or paint-balling to "going down the dogs".

It would be tempting to regard this as another piece of working-class culture that is being cruelly stripped away. But consider this: greyhound racing, in its mechanised form, was once as exciting and modern as the Wii. Dog racing had roots in traditional hare coursing, but it was an American businessman, Charles Munn, who introduced the modern form of the sport into this country in 1926. The mechanised hare and circular track were designed by Owen Patrick Smith, a resident of Hot Springs, South Dakota, in 1912. His motivation was his belief that traditional coursing was inhumane.

So what is often viewed as the quintessential British working-class sport is, arguably, as American as the Big Mac. Such an irony is not going to save the rabbit of dog racing being savaged by the greyhound of time. But it does make the sport's relative decline look a little less socially brutal; something that would surely have appealed to the sensitive Owen Patrick Smith.

Interesting? Click here to explore further